


wwhy am i helpin bathe this baby its not evven mine

by Signel_chan



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Babies, Baby Showers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 09:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan's just a single guy with a nice house. Someone needs somewhere spacious to throw her baby shower. Eridan takes this opportunity to get on her good side, for once, with somewhat disasterous results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wwhy am i helpin bathe this baby its not evven mine

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank my boyfriend for inspiring me to write this. Also all the text posts in the Tavris tag that bring up the point made at the end. Thanks to those, too.

For being the single guy that he was, Eridan never expected to have to deal with the event known as a baby shower—since typically they were girls-only and, if a guy was to be there, it would most likely be the baby’s dad, which he didn’t ever plan on filling that role for anyone. But he had money (thanks to his father who, admittedly, made his living doing less-than-legal things), and with that money came a big house with enough room for a large party. And it was because of that room that one of his “friends” came to him asking to use his place for her upcoming baby shower; he couldn’t tell her no because she was highly violent even without the aid of raging hormones, and maybe by pandering to her demands he’d be able to get on her good side for once.

The way she described how she wanted things to go, Eridan’s first thought was that there would be more people coming than could fit in whatever run-down shack she was living in could hold. That was okay, because his house had been the site of many parties that had upwards of a hundred people, so what problem was a somewhat large group of his friend’s friends?

The actual problem was that there weren’t very many guests who showed up to the party at all, making all the preparations fairly useless. What good would a room set up for fifty do when there were barely ten guests that arrived? The only plus side to the over-preparation was that there was plenty of space for all the treats and gifts everyone who did show up brought with them. There were bags upon bags of presents for both mother and child, not to mention at least three different cakes and many different trays of assorted crackers and cheeses. If one thing was for sure, everyone at the party would be going home well fed.

The last person to actually show up was the woman of the hour, who looked utterly disgusted at how few people were there. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered to her male companion, whom Eridan had never met before in his life, but he was pretty sure that the scrawny and tall tan man was the father to the bitchy woman’s kid. “I bet someone decided to throw a party somewhere nice today, and invited everyone that was supposed to be here!”

“Or, you know, they could have decided that anywhere but here is better than being stuck in a room with you.” For looking like he didn’t have any fight in him, the guy shot an insult at her that made her gasp in shock, before playfully pushing him away and telling him to stop joking. “Yeah, got it. Let’s just get this over with.”

He stayed a few steps behind her as she somewhat waddled herself to where everyone was gathered, and that was when Eridan strolled out from the hallway where he had been watching their interactions, hoping to make a new friend. “Hey, you there,” he said, pointing at the guy. “What’s your name? I’ve never seen anyone talk to Vriska like that and come out of it alive.”

“Oh, uh, I’m Tavros. I’ve been putting up with Vriska for a long time now, and I’m kind of used to how she acts, and she lets me get a bit rude at her.” He stuck his hand out, which Eridan instantly grabbed and shook. “You’re Eridan, right? You talk weird and Vriska says that you do that.”

“Of course she’d tell you about my speech impediment. I open up my place to her so she can have this little get-together of hers and she goes and tells her arm candy that I can’t talk for shit. How wonderful.” He was in the process of making a mental note to never be nice to Vriska again when he was interrupted by his new friend.

“While I appreciate you calling me her ‘arm candy’, I don’t think you should say that so loudly. She’s been hearing things from really far lately, and I don’t want her hurting you for that.” For them having never met before this moment, there was already a bit of a bond established between them, and it made for the afternoon and evening to go by a lot faster. Since this was a baby shower, the two men tried to leave the women to themselves and spend time hanging out and playing video games on one of the big flat-screen televisions in the house, talking about their experiences with Vriska and her easily triggered temper.

As was to be expected, things didn’t go as well for them as they would have liked. Just like Tavros had said she could, she did overhear one of them say something unflattering about her and started yelling at them both about it, before forcing them to hang around and participate in the festivities. That meant they had to play stupid games, such as matching names to meanings and trying to drink milk out of a baby bottle, and had to act like they were enjoying it. In reality, they hated what they were doing and would have much rather been playing online first-person shooters, but they had to do what pleased Vriska, or suffer the consequences.

The evening dragged on for what seemed like an eternity, but eventually the party began to wrap up, and while everyone was eating cake and other goodies, Vriska began to open all the gifts that she had been brought. A good portion of them were just the necessities, and she tended to blow those off, but there were a few that caught her attention. The first one was a box of clothing, each little outfit quite obviously store-bought, but with little decorations sewn on to them. “This one has our initials on it!” she squealed, shoving the thing into poor Tavros’ face. “It’s perfect! And all this stuff is blue too! Blue is my favorite color, you know!”

“I doubt it’s blue because you like it,” he replied with a bored sigh. “I’m fairly certain that it’s blue because most things made for little boys are blue.”

“Yes, but it’s my favorite shade of blue!” The way Vriska dragged out half the vowels in that sentence worked to only tick Tavros off even more, and she got the hint to leave him alone even if she was really excited about the clothes. Her excitement became even more intense when she unwrapped a little knit spider. “I love spiders! This is going to be perfect for him!”

Once again, Tavros had something to say in the least excited way he possibly could. “I don’t think spiders are a proper creature for a kid to be attached to. Can’t we hold off on scaring him with eight-legged creatures until he can at least say he doesn’t like them?”

“You’re no fun! I think I’ll make sure he sleeps with this little guy in his crib every night for a long while!” With that, she put the spider in the box with the clothes and continued on with her gift opening. The last thing she got to open, which was specifically left for last because the woman who brought it kept it hidden until everything else was done, was a little baby book, complete with stickers to customize the front cover with the baby’s name.

And that was where Vriska burst into tears and couldn’t handle what was happening anymore. “Great, you broke her,” Tavros muttered, before trying to calm her down; his attempt was unsuccessful because the second he started hugging her, she started crying even harder. “No, don’t cry, everything’s okay…”

“I know it’s okay, dumbass! I’m crying happy tears! Obviously we’re meant to decorate this cover here today, but there’s one problem with that!”

“We don’t have to do it today. We can wait.”

Like she had been faking her tears, she instantly stopped crying and pushed him away. “No! We’re doing it today, before everyone leaves! Besides, we’re never going to pick out a name for the kid ourselves, so let’s let them help us out!”

Despite all the protesting that Tavros did, Vriska’s mind could not be changed, and so she proposed the idea of naming her unborn child to all her friends, and they jumped on that idea faster than anyone could have predicted. Over the next hour or so (Eridan kept checking his phone for the time to see if it was getting too late, which it was), all the ladies threw out their name suggestions and one of them wrote them on a piece of paper to document what was suggested. Once everyone’s ideas were all exhausted, Vriska took the paper and read them all to try and decide what she liked best. As anyone who knew her could have predicted, she didn’t like a single one. “Oh, too bad, sorry, but you’ve got to get out of my house now,” the man of the house said before Vriska got the chance to ask for more names. “It’s almost dark and I’ve got places to go. Come up with a name on your own time.”

“This is an important matter, Eridan! You’re going to stop my baby from having a name!”

“No, Vris, I’m stoppin’ you from findin’ your perfect name tonight. Do it somewhere that isn’t my house.” He looked at all the guests, who were beginning to pack up the leftover food and clean their trash a bit. “It’s been nice havin’ you all here, but I’m done.”

She glared at him. “I’ll leave if you suggest a name. Just one. It doesn’t have to be good, but it has to be a legit suggestion.”

Eridan had to think for a moment to come up with a name, and the first place his mind went was stupid but it sounded like it would work. He made sure he had it right, went over it a few times, and opened his mouth to say it…but when he spoke, he accidentally moved one of the letters, changing his stupid answer to one that Vriska really, really liked. “Shit, I didn’t mean to say that,” he told her after his mistake, but she was too excited about the name to care that it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

He hadn’t wanted to deal with the baby shower.

He hadn’t wanted to ever really deal with Vriska.

And yet there he was, accidentally naming her son Travis.


End file.
